


what if i told you (i feel like i know you)

by newseptembers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Barista Rey (Star Wars), F/M, Masturbation, Pining, Soft Ben Solo, ben goes to therapy, nerd flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27139471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newseptembers/pseuds/newseptembers
Summary: Kanata’s Coffee beckons him with the siren’s song of coffee in the air, and he follows it mindlessly, crossing the threshold and coming to a halt at the counter almost before he realises what he’s done. He hadn’t planned this, and a cold sweat breaks out at the back of his neck as he makes eye contact with the barista.“What can I get for you?” she asks, clear-cut English accent carving through the fog in his brain.— The best part of Ben Solo's day is his visit to his local coffee shop. The fact that he can't stop thinking about the barista who works there is completely unrelated.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 141
Kudos: 496





	what if i told you (i feel like i know you)

**Author's Note:**

> "i'm going to write something short to break me out of my writer's block," i said, one month ago. big thanks to [rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scintillant/pseuds/scintillant) for the beta!
> 
> a disclaimer: i am not a mental health professional and these are not accurate depictions of therapy sessions!! i am also neither a barista or a coffee drinker so any mistakes are my own.
> 
> title is from "punisher" by phoebe bridgers.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

He starts visiting the coffee shop because it’s close, which is good. It’s on his new route to work, which is even better. It’s overpriced, but he can afford it—some kind of uber-modern industrial-plant-mom hybrid that he doesn’t understand, not really. But the coffee is strong, and the shop is so fully removed from the kind of place that he would have frequented _before_ that he finds himself almost endeared by the plants that line the walls, leafy fronds reaching perilously close to his head. 

He’s trying to do that: make a conscious effort to divide his life into _then_ and _now._ Kylo Ren wouldn’t deign to grace the threshold of a cafe where the drinks have kitschy names and there’s greenery on every table. 

But Kylo Ren doesn’t exist anymore.

Kylo Ren never existed, not really. The name was just a mask a frightened boy used to make himself feel stronger, but it grew into his skin until he had to cut it out like a cancer. Ben is still working on mending the jagged edges that it left. 

It started with quitting his job, with showing up on his mother’s doorstep after a four-hour drive and eight years and his pride whittled down to a sliver, standing in the rain and asking her for help.

It hasn’t ended—sometimes he thinks it never will—but now, Ben has two therapy appointments a week, where he pays a very large amount of money to be taught how to be kind to people again, like he’s been sent back to kindergarten and told to play nice. 

He has a new job, too, at the publishing company his family owns. Lower on the totem pole than he ever was when he worked for Snoke, but when the burn of indignation threatens to lick up his spine, he reminds himself of the man Snoke made him—the man he hated being. 

(He tries to ignore the truth that Snoke didn’t _create_ him, merely unleashed all of the parts of himself that he tries to keep hidden, honing his anger into a finely tempered tool).

On the surface, Ben has it all: a new career, a new apartment, a family that welcomed him back like he never left. 

And a coffee shop where he’s fast becoming a regular. 

He stumbles into it largely by accident, the first week he moves back to Chandrila. He hasn’t bought a new coffee machine yet, after he abandoned Coruscant with little more than the clothes on his back and the car he refuses to part with, so he’s on the second day of a vicious caffeine withdrawal headache when he spots it from across the road.

(Walking to work is yet another new thing he’s trying. Amilyn recommends fresh air to combat the listlessness he feels, and he trusts his therapist. Mostly. She keeps telling him that he should smile more, but Ben is halfway convinced that the muscles in his face have atrophied and that he’s doomed to scowl forever).

Kanata’s Coffee beckons him with the siren’s song of coffee in the air, and he follows it mindlessly, crossing the threshold and coming to a halt at the counter almost before he realises what he’s done. He hadn’t planned this, and a cold sweat breaks out at the back of his neck as he makes eye contact with the barista.

“What can I get for you?” she asks, clear-cut English accent carving through the fog in his brain.

Ben blinks once, eyes flicking to the menu behind her, scanning the list of options as he takes a deep breath. 

_Try to slowly create a routine,_ Amilyn always says. _Add one thing at a time._

Getting coffee is part of a routine.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and avoids making eye contact. “Just… deciding.”

Kylo Ren drank red eyes with as many extra shots of espresso as he could get, until he got so used to the high that his hands stopped shaking from over-caffeination. But Ben is trying to make positive changes.

The barista hums politely, moving away to give him a moment, and he follows her movements. She’s tall and slight, with bright hazel eyes and chestnut hair pulled back into three buns in a line at the back of her head, dressed in an olive green apron. When she turns away from him he spots a rip in the seam of her plain black t-shirt and he has to force his eyes away from the strip of exposed skin.

“Flat white,” he blurts out. “Please.”

Kylo Ren never used to say please.

_Smile,_ he hears Amilyn say, and he forces one side of his mouth to lift into something that probably looks more like a grimace. 

The girl does _not_ smile back. 

Somehow, this is reassuring. His not-smile drops and he rocks back on his heels, pushing a crumpled ten dollar bill towards her and motioning for her to keep the change. When she pushes his coffee towards him their fingers brush; it’s the most human contact he’s had in ages.

She doesn’t pull back like he expects, her hand lingering against his. Her fingers are slim and cool against the heat of the cup, and when they make eye contact, her mouth opens like she’s on the cusp of saying something. 

But the man behind him in the line interrupts, coughing loudly before she’s able to speak, and Ben has to leave, shouldering the door open and reemerging into the grey Chandrilan morning. 

His coffee tastes like salvation going down, but there’s something else warming him from the inside out. 

And then he just… keeps going back. Even after his coffee machine arrives, a space-age contraption with more settings than he knows what to do with. 

He tells himself that it’s because the coffee he makes at home doesn’t taste the same as the one he got at Kanata’s.

It has nothing to do with the barista. Nothing at all. 

***

She has a name tag, but it takes until his third visit to notice, too used to thinking of her as simply _the girl_. 

(The first thing he notices about her is her smile—he sees a flash of white teeth as she grins at her coworker, and he wants to capture the feeling it gives him, carry it around in his pocket and check it like a map when he feels lost).

It’s a miniature chalkboard pinned to her apron, _hello, my name is…_ painstakingly printed in cursive with _REY_ scrawled in spiky capitals underneath, and Ben spends longer than he wants to admit testing the weight of her name on his tongue. 

But he doesn’t use it. 

Every time she pushes his drink towards him over the counter—still the same flat white—he debates saying _thank you, Rey_ or _that’s great, Rey_ or _are you as intrigued by me as I am by you, Rey?_ But he never does; just offers a murmur of thanks before retreating, walking to work with the missed opportunities swirling around in his head and his fingers tingling where from their hands brush. 

(Sometimes, when she leans over to pass him his drink, the neckline of her t-shirt gapes open to reveal the constellation of freckles dotting her shoulder, and Ben has to forcibly stop himself from imagining what it would feel like to trace the pattern of them with his mouth).

He knows, really, that he’s projecting. He’s gone so long without an intimate connection that he’s seeing things that aren’t there and assigning meanings to a script she repeats with every customer. He doesn’t want to be _that_ guy, drooling over her while she’s bound by the politeness of employment.

So when his visits become a part of his daily routine and she starts getting his order ready the minute he walks through the door, he chalks it up to her being good at her job. When she starts calling after him as he leaves, wishing him a good day, he assumes that’s how she speaks to all the other customers, too. When she starts hiding blueberry muffins behind the counter after one too many incidents where they’ve sold out before he’s got there, he starts tipping a little bit extra. 

And then he starts coming to Kanata’s for lunch. 

For the first few weeks that he works at Skywalker Publishing, his mother and uncle insist on him eating with them, either in one of their top-floor offices or in a restaurant with no prices on its menu and a too-expansive wine list for 1pm. 

And it’s fine, really. It is. 

His mother makes such a concerted effort to act as though he never left that he and Luke are united in their awkwardness, too many years of bad blood suppressed by the force of Leia Organa’s willpower. But after a while of excusing himself from his desk and taking the elevator up three floors—to the floor some secret, jealous part of him can’t help but think that he _should_ be on—he starts craving some space. 

Since leaving Snoke, he’s spent more time with his family than he has since his childhood, his parents carving out time in their busy schedules in a way that they never bothered to do when he was young. Sometimes, he thinks that they needed to lose him to realise they cared. 

And they _do_ care. They care so much that it’s almost suffocating. 

So three weeks into his employment, Ben begs off and makes his way outside, hands in his pockets as he walks without a destination in mind. 

( _Try being spontaneous_ , Amilyn likes to say. _New experiences are what shape us_ ).

Somehow, though, his feet tread a well-worn path, and he’s outside the door to Kanata’s in the blink of an eye, the door swinging open with a cheerful chime.

His eyes go to the counter immediately, and Ben has to stamp down on a flicker of disappointment when he realises that Rey isn’t there.

But he knew there was a chance she wouldn’t be. She was there this morning, after all, and he knows her shifts don’t last all day. Some mornings he doesn’t see her at all, and he makes awkward conversation with the other baristas while he waits for his coffee.

He orders a chicken club and takes a seat, pulling out a book, a sci-fi fantasy from his family’s imprint that he stubbornly avoided reading for years. He hates to admit that it’s exactly the kind of thing he would have loved as a teen.

The lunch hour passes in a haze of good food and good literature, and as he makes the journey back to his office—walking slowly this time—Ben resolves to take Amilyn’s advice more often. 

***

By the time he’s worked at Skywalker for three months, he’s firmly entrenched as a Kanata’s regular. The baristas all know him by name, and he knows theirs: Rose and Finn and Kaydel and the owner herself, Maz, a tiny, wrinkled old woman with coke bottle glasses.

And Rey.

They’ve graduated to conversation now. He asks if her shift has been busy and she asks him about his job, and sometimes when she brings his sandwich to his table she hovers for a moment before she’s called back to the counter, unsaid words thick in the air between them.

(Ben always wants to ask her to stay).

(But sometimes, his eyes linger on the curve of her ass in her jeans as she walks away from him, and even the knowledge that he’s being the worst kind of creep can’t help the desire that coils thick and heavy in his veins). 

One day as he’s ordering, she spots the thick paperback tucked into the crook of his arm, her eyes brightening as she reads the title. 

“Is that the Galaxy Clash series?” she asks, and he nods. He’s a little outside the target demographic— _fine_ , they’re aimed at teenagers—but when they were published he was firmly in the grip of adolescent ennui and determined to avoid anything his family were even tangentially related to. He’s got a lot to catch up on. 

“I used to love those as a kid,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I wore out the library copies—I stole their copy of The Grimtaash when I was eleven and—” 

She breaks off, like she’s said something she shouldn’t, but he secrets the knowledge away into the bank of things that he knows about Rey. 

“We’re reprinting them,” he offers, showing her the updated cover of his copy. It’s the first in the series, redesigned to appeal to the now-adult audience. “For the fifteenth anniversary. There’s bonus content, I think.”

There’s a whole new book coming out too, the author persuaded out of retirement after a ten-year hiatus, but the NDA he signed means that it’ll stay a secret for a little longer.

“Have you read them? The cliffhanger book twelve ends on ruined my life as a kid.”

“Ah,” he winces, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “No. I was pretty deep in the teen angst when these came out. Catching up on that lost youth now.”

Rey nods knowingly, one corner of her mouth lifting in a gentle smirk. 

(He wants to kiss it off her). 

“Let me guess: you thought Holden Caulfield was just misunderstood?” 

“I read my copy to death,” Ben admits, and Rey laughs, pushing his coffee towards him. 

“Well, with these you’ve got a lot to look forward to,” she says. “Something tells me you’re going to love Matthias.”

At his raised eyebrow, she elaborates. “You know, the whole tortured anti-hero, _no-one-understands-me_ thing.”

Four hours later, when he skips lunch to read over his break, he admits that she’s right. 

***

The series is long—twelve books, each over five hundred pages; it’s the kind of thing he would have loved as a teenager if he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn. He flies through the series, reading in every spare moment, and every morning and lunch Rey interrogates him about his progress.

_HAVE YOU REACHED THE SIEGE OF HAPES YET???_ She scrawls on his to-go cup one morning, and when he finally notices it back at the office, he hides a smile in the collar of his shirt, running his thumb over the black marker of her handwriting.

He leaves the cup on his desk for the rest of the day, glancing at it occasionally through meetings and phone calls, and each time he reads her message he feels an unexpected surge of sentimentality. 

When he _does_ reach the siege of Hapes, halfway through book six, he finds himself taking notes on scrap pieces of paper and sliding them between the pages of the book, formulating his thoughts before he sees Rey again. 

The next morning, she talks until a line of customers forms behind them, explaining the intricacies of the plot as Ben’s coffee grows cold on the counter.

He finds that he doesn’t mind. 

***

“And how did that make you feel?”

Ben shifts a little in the too-small seat, sweat dampening the starched cotton of his shirt collar where it rests too close to his skin. A visit to Amilyn’s office feels like being put on a dissecting table, restrained and helpless as she pokes at all of the things he tries so hard to keep hidden.

“It’s your family’s company, after all,” his therapist continues. Today, her lavender hair is twisted into an intricate braid. It looks like something his mother used to wear, back when he was young. 

He clears his throat, hands balled into fists at his sides. His employment is still a sore subject, and being passed up for a commendation smarts more than it should.

“Angry,” he starts. Amilyn hums in acknowledgement, beckoning him to continue, and Ben takes a deep breath. “And jealous. Then ashamed. Then embarrassed for being ashamed, which made me angry again.”

Each word takes physical effort, forcing his throat to work against the lump that threatens to choke him. Each appointment gets incrementally less tortuous—the first time he came to her office, Ben sat in sullen silence for nearly forty-five minutes, unwilling or unable to _start_ —but confronting his dark side will never come easily. 

“Anger and jealousy are natural emotions, Ben,” Amilyn says, crossing one leg over the other and leaning closer. “But the danger comes when we let them control us.”

His coffee cup is abandoned on the table, gently steaming. The edge of Rey’s writing is visible, _BEN :-)_ curving messily over the cardboard, and he focuses on the stark, deliberate lines of marker instead of making eye contact. 

“But you can recognise the root of these feelings now. I’m so proud of the progress that you’ve made recently, and you should be too—we’re really getting somewhere.”

She smiles encouragingly at him, then glances at the clock. Following her eye line, Ben sags in relief when he realises that their session is nearly at an end. 

Amilyn laughs at his relaxed posture, shaking her head.

“One day, Ben, you won’t run out of this office like you’re on fire. Do you have somewhere to be?”

He does, actually—his standing 1:30pm lunch at Kanata’s. He’s finally reached book nine in the series, The Grimtaash, and since it’s Rey’s favourite, she’s been demanding chapter-by-chapter updates.

If he had her phone number, he thinks, this would all be much easier. He could call or text his thoughts, instead of developing a caffeine habit that puts a serious dent in his weekly budget. And if he had her phone number, he would _know_. Know that Rey is going beyond indulging a loyal customer, that she looks forward to their conversations as much as he does.

That his feelings aren’t one sided. 

But as it is, he’s one hundred pages from the end of the book with a notebook full of things he wants to talk about with her and a thirty minute walk to the cafe, so he mutters goodbye to Amilyn and shoves his arms through the sleeves of his coat, braving the cool autumn air.

***

“—And what did you think of the big twist? Did you see it coming?”

Rey is glowing, the tendrils of hair that have escaped from her buns turning gold in the light, framing her face like a halo. The coffee grounds splattered on her face look like her freckles.

The cafe is practically deserted, only one other customer besides Ben, so she’s come to sit opposite him, only his copy of The Grimtaash separating them. He sees her across the counter every day, but over a table feels more intimate. 

(It feels like a date). 

Rey’s hands rest in the gulf between them, fingers twined together. It wouldn’t take much effort at all to tangle her fingers with his own, to stroke against the bumps of her knuckles with his thumb and soothe over the healing burn that bisects the back of her hand. 

But he’s a coward.

“I didn’t,” he admits instead, and when Rey shakes her head in exaggerated disappointment he feels compelled to offer an explanation. 

“He _killed_ people—these books are for kids, I don’t know. I guess I just thought he’d be evil forever.”

“You say that like teens aren’t smart,” Rey challenges. “They can understand the metaphor of it all, Ben.”

His eyes drop to her mouth when she says his name, lingering for long enough for her to notice. She blushes, pink spreading across her cheekbones underneath her freckles, and when their eyes meet her pupils have dilated, expanding beyond the green of her irises.

Ben’s breath expels in a heavy exhale.

“That’s because they _aren’t_ ,” he says. “I was a dumbass when I was a teenager.”

“You still are,” Rey shoots back. “If you couldn’t see the writing on the wall. Matthias killing the Supreme Leader was obvious from the moment Kira was captured.”

He laughs, shaking his head. Sitting across from her feels like a job interview—like her opinion of him depends solely on his opinions of the Galaxy Clash characters. 

Arguing with her is like being in a courtroom again, reminds him of fast-paced debate and shouted objections. Except it’s fictional characters they’re discussing—although Rey’s fervour is intimidatingly intense for the subject matter.

“Are you kidding, Rey?” he scoffs. When he leans back in his chair, the front legs lift off the ground, tilting him backwards. He balances just on the edge of tipping over, and for one dizzying moment the chair hovers at the point of no return, before he shifts his weight and rocks back to the ground with a thud.

(Every interaction with her feels like dancing on that knife edge, like the thrill of momentarily defying gravity). 

“Matthias went into that room with no idea of what he was doing. He just killed his own father, for fuck’s sake.”

Her eye roll is spectacular, but the hint of a smile still plays at the corner of her mouth. 

“You really didn’t get it, did you?” she says. Her eyes flash gold with determination and she leans closer across the table. “The Supreme Leader told Matthias that killing his dad would make him stronger, but it did the opposite. He needed to hit rock bottom to have something to come back from.”

Ben pauses, pressing his lips together in a hard line. For a teenagers’ book series, some of the storylines hit a little too close to home. 

“I haven’t read this book in years,” Rey continues, unaware of how she’s knocked his world off its axis. “I want to, to see if it still holds up, but sometimes I think the memory is better than the real thing.”

She looks down, her voice soft. “Anyway, I don’t even have a copy anymore. I think I read mine to death.”

“Take mine,” he offers without thinking, pushing the book across the table. 

Rey reaches out to tug it towards her. 

“Are you sure?” she says. She picks the book up like a baby, tracing one finger down the spine before cracking the cover and leafing through the pages, holding it like something precious. Her fingernails are bitten down to the quick. 

He probably shouldn’t—scratch that, he _definitely_ shouldn’t. Ben has technically been reading his way through Advanced Reader Copies of the reprinted editions, with _NOT FOR RESALE_ stamped in bold letters on the spine. 

But then he’s not selling it. This is a loan. An extended, life-time loan. 

“Of course,” he says, willing himself to sound blasé. “I can get another copy no problem.”

He’ll have to make up a tragic incident in the bath or a particularly discerning burglar, but it’s worth it. 

Rey gathers the book close to her chest, cradling it in her crossed arms, but after giving it a tight squeeze she tilts it back to look at the cover, her thumb running over the artwork. It’s his favourite of the series, Matthias and Kira caught at an impasse as Matthias’s grandfather’s sword is suspended in the air between them.

“Ben,” she starts. “I can’t take this.”

“You _can_ ,” he says, reaching out. He falls short of her and his outstretched fingers languish on the table; he pats it in awkward emphasis before drawing back, not brave enough to remain in the no man’s land between them. “I want you to. Please.”

Their eyes meet, and Rey’s smile blossoms—growing slowly from upturned lips until she’s shining like the sun in the haloed afternoon light of the cafe. It’s a smile that’s mirrored on his face for the first in a long time, muscles that he thought were atrophied easing back into use like an old man getting up from his armchair for the first time that day. 

“Thank you, Ben,” she says, brimming with sincerity. 

He wants to lean across the table and kiss her, press her back in her chair with one hand cupping her jaw and the other loosening her hair from her three buns. He wants to see her outside the confines of Kanata’s, in clothes other than her olive green apron—see her in his shirt, in nothing except his cotton sheets. He wants to wake up beside her on lazy Sunday mornings.

(Ben wants a lot of things). 

***

That night, he jerks off for the first time in weeks, one hand flat on the cool tile of the shower wall as the other works his cock in long pulls, water coursing down his back. 

His mind is filled with images of Rey—her smile, her laugh, the tanned strip of her stomach that’s visible when she raises her arms—and he muffles a curse into his shoulder and comes embarrassingly quickly, painting the tile in white ropes. 

(Even the worst kind of self-flagellation can’t stop him from imagining the flare of her hips under his hands, or the way she tastes, or the noises she’d make when he pushed inside of her).

He spends his next visit to Kanata’s determinedly avoiding eye contact, sure his sins are written all over his face. 

***

Amilyn, he has learned, is a master of the encouraging hum. 

She sits in her armchair and listens as the whole story unspools in front of him, from his and Rey’s first awkward meeting to the present day, humming occasionally as he goes. When she stays silent, he keeps speaking, filling the emptiness of the room with stories of their many interactions. 

(He leaves out the more sordid details).

“You like this girl?”

Ben nods. _Like_ seems almost too insignificant a word.

“But you haven’t said anything.”

Amilyn says it like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like he doesn’t risk losing not only Rey as a friend but also an entire aspect of the routine he’s so carefully constructed at her urging. 

“She’s a barista,” he replies flatly, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I worked at a law firm—that’s Sexual Harassment 101.” 

“But she speaks to you often?”

“Every day,” he says. “She gave me her number after I lent her that book.”

She wrote it on the side of his coffee cup, _CALL ME_ in inch high letters, and by the time he got home that night she’d sent him eleven messages about Matthias and Kira, and how stupid he was for not seeing what the text made clear. 

She uses _so many_ emojis. It both terrifies and exhilarates him.

“So saying that she feels positively towards you is a safe assumption to make?” Amilyn posits, crossing one leg over the other. 

Ben nods again, begrudgingly. 

“Normally,” she continues. “I would say to be cautious. She’s been working every time you’ve spoken. But she’s also initiated—Rey _gave_ you her phone number. I don’t want you robbing yourself of something before it even has a chance to start.”

She’s right, he knows. He’s practiced in denying himself the things he wants—and he wants Rey. He can’t convince himself not to anymore. 

“But she’s so young,” he tries, like one last-ditch effort to have someone tell him that he doesn’t deserve to be happy. 

“You’re thirty-three, Ben. You’re both adults. Please don’t sit here in front of me and my crow’s feet and call yourself _old_ ,” Amilyn says, a wry smile curling at the corners of her mouth.

He feels so much older, but he sits back, chastened, and tries to ignore the tiny flicker of hope that’s ignited in his gut. 

“I know that you feel like you have to always be in control,” Amilyn continues softly. “And that’s understandable. But things like relationships don’t follow a playbook—you can’t control how people _feel._ What do I always say?” 

“Try being spontaneous,” he finishes, repeating her mantra. He knows it well. It’s what got him into this situation in the first place, after all. 

“Try that out, Ben. I think it’ll go better than you expect.”

***

Skywalker Publishing gets their first shipment of the final novel in the Galaxy Clash series on the Friday three weeks after Ben’s appointment with Amilyn; he eschews dinner and his usual workout and starts reading on the train back to his apartment, standing with a white-knuckled grip on the grab handle and turning the pages one handed.

(He cracks the spine, but he can’t bring himself to care). 

The Will of the Force is nearly eight hundred pages, but Ben reads it in under twenty four hours, stopping only for six hours of fitful sleep. He reads in bed, on the sofa, standing in front of the stove and stirring pasta with one hand while he holds the book in the other. 

And the whole time, he thinks of Rey.

When Matthias makes his triumphant return to the light, he pictures her reaction; he wants to be there to see it, watch the slow-dawning joy spread across her face. When Kira nearly dies, he can imagine how panicked Rey will be when she reads. When Matthias’ mother sacrifices her life for her son, he remembers Rey sharing that exact theory with him at Kanata’s, and he swells with pride at her prediction coming true. 

When he reaches the last word of the last page and slowly puts the book down, Ben breathes out a quiet sigh. There’s a kind of aching emptiness deep in his soul, the sort of feeling that comes from being ripped out of a world of someone else’s creation. 

It’s a different kind of emptiness to what he’s used to—not an endless well of self-hatred and darkness, but like he’s given part of himself to that world and left a gap behind. He runs a rueful finger over the author’s signature on the endpaper and shakes his head. 

If his fifteen year old self could see him now. 

That boy was… angry, all the time; angry at himself and his family and the whole world. He let that anger cannibalise him until it threatened to consume him.

But Ben’s not that frightened, self-destructive child anymore. He has good things in his life—things he spent years telling himself that he didn’t need or deserve. Things like Sunday dinners with his parents, like walking to work when the sun is shining, like visiting a coffee shop where all the baristas greet him by name.

Like Rey. 

Ben presses his lips together. He can’t keep pretending that what they have is enough. He wants more—wants to be able to see Rey’s reactions to Galaxy Clash in real time, to read aloud with her, to embarrass himself with matching Halloween costumes. 

He has to _do_ something. 

***

Ben takes to carrying the book around like some sort of talisman, keeping it in his briefcase through long work days, and he avoids Kanata’s while he formulates a plan, choking down the burnt remains of the office coffee-pot out of a suspiciously-stained mug and running over scenarios in his mind.

The thought of her rejection paralyses him, but so does the idea of never saying anything, spending his earnings at Kanata’s and relegated to a side character in her life, instead of where he wants to be—a part of her story. 

It takes a week for him to brave the threshold of the cafe again.

He hadn’t even planned it—he’s been waiting for the perfect moment (whatever that may be)—but the Chandrilian heavens open on his walk home from work and force him to seek shelter wherever he can. It just so happens that Maz’s place is closest.

He bursts through the doors, soaked to the skin, and his glasses immediately fog from the heat. When the lenses clear, he makes direct eye contact with Rey, standing behind the counter and taking a sip of a drink that’s a worryingly bright shade of green.

“Did you go for a swim?” she calls, and every head in the packed cafe turns towards him. Her eyes crinkle at the corners, one hand coming up to wave. She looks better in that apron than anyone has a right to. 

Ben knows instantly that this is _it._

He rakes a hand through his hair, resisting the urge to shake his head like a wet dog. Even his shirt is drenched, and as he shrugs out of his heavy wool coat, the fabric sticks uncomfortably to his skin, white cotton gone nearly translucent. 

“I forgot my umbrella,” he explains with a shrug, weaving around the tables and determinedly avoiding eye contact with anyone but Rey. Her gaze skates across the expanse of his torso before coming back up to meet his face, and Ben knows he isn’t imagining the way her eyes flicker. 

(It’s strange. When he pictured this moment— _the_ moment—he thought he’d be terrified; knees weak, heart racing, palms sweaty. And he is. 

But he also feels sure of himself in a way that he hasn’t for a very long time). 

When he draws up to the counter, Rey pushes his already-made drink towards him with a smile, bouncing on her heels. The three buns of her hair bob with the motion.

“One flat white, as usual,” she says. “You’re a committed man, Ben Solo.”

The laugh he lets out is more practiced than he’d like to admit, one hand reaching for his cup and the other fumbling to put his wallet away. His briefcase gapes open, the foil lettering on the hardback copy of The Will of the Force glinting in the low cafe light, and Rey gasps like she’s been punched. 

“You _have_ it?” she hisses, reaching out to grab him by the sleeve. The heat of her hand soaks right through the damp cotton of his shirt, branding the skin of his arm. “How did you—Was it through work? I’m so jealous, it doesn’t come out for another month!”

“I’ve already read it,” he admits. “Rey, I wanted to—” 

“— _Rey!_ ” screams a voice from the back of the cafe, jolting them out of their bubble. Rey pulls her hand away, smoothing an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s you on break!”

“Kaydel,” she explains with a jerk of her head, not breaking eye contact. “You’ve _read_ it?” 

Ben nods, still stuck on her hand on his arm. 

“I’m going outside,” Rey starts, pulling her apron over her head. “You coming? You need to tell me everything.”

Looking out the window, he can tell that the rain hasn’t stopped in the slightest—in fact, it looks like it’s coming down even heavier than before, pelting the pavement. 

“I love the rain,” she says, answering his pointed look outside. “I grew up in the desert.” 

Rey pushes the door open and steps out, her shirt instantly plastering to the contours of her body. He has to pull his eyes away, caught on the threshold. 

“Ben, come on!” she laughs, tilting her head up to the sky and closing her eyes as raindrops splatter on her face.

He sighs. He’s only just started to dry off.

But it’s Rey, and he’s very quickly realising that he’ll do anything she asks him to. 

His glasses become unusable instantly, and he tucks them in his shirt pocket, blinking owlishly as the world around him fuzzes at the edges. He can still make Rey out clear as day, taking cover under the cafe’s awning, and he moves to join her, cursing as an ice-cold drop of water slides past his collar and down his back.

Under the shelter, the rain exists only as echoes on the fabric roof above them. It’s a small area, and when Rey turns to face him she’s closer than he expected, their chests brushing together.

(This close, he can count the freckles on her nose). 

Her eyelashes are spiky from the rain, her breath puffing hot on his cheek. She gestures expectantly towards his bag, and when Ben pulls out the book he hopes she can’t tell that his hands are shaking.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispers, taking it from him and turning it over in her hands. She opens the cover, leafing through the first pages, and when she stumbles across the signature on the title page she looks up at him, eyes shining. “It’s _signed—_ how did you—”

“My uncle is the author,” Ben interrupts. “By the time he published them, I was already practically working for Snoke. I thought they were trash for years—I was so angry, all the time—” 

Rey’s mouth drops open, her eyes flicking between him and the book.

“ _You’re_ Matthias,” she blurts out, her eyes wide. “He wrote them for you.”

He stops, reeling. As soon as she says it, all the pieces drop into place: he was fifteen and living with his uncle when he was writing the first manuscript; the way Matthias tears himself away from his family; the toxic master he works so hard to defeat.

They both have dark hair and big noses, for fuck’s sake. He’s been so blind. 

“I can’t believe you didn’t _tell_ me,” Rey says, punching his arm. “Luke Naberrie! You’ve been keeping secrets, Ben. First this and then reading Will of the Force without me.” 

As she speaks, she draws infinitesimally closer, until his whole world has narrowed to just him and her, under the awning. 

“That’s why I came by, Rey,” he says, voice low. She shivers when he says her name, their foreheads nearly pressed together. “I wanted to give it to you. The whole time I was reading it I thought of you—”

She surges towards him, cutting him off, slanting her mouth against his. Rey kisses like she argues—aggressively, her whole body going into it; she slips one hand into his hair and fists his shirt in the other, tugging him towards her. Ben balances himself with one hand at her waist and sinks into the kiss, only vaguely aware of the Will of the Force slipping from her grip and crashing to the pavement below them.

She tastes like coffee and cinnamon, her lips slightly chapped, and when he nips at her lower lip she responds with a quiet sigh, opening up for him. 

(It’s better than he could have ever imagined, the rain fading into the background until all he can focus on is the hot slide of her mouth against his own as time slips away from them). 

“Ben,” Rey whispers when they finally break apart, breathing heavily. Her eyes are dark, the green of her iris completely eclipsed by her pupils. He can’t resist the urge to brush one last kiss against her mouth, savouring the taste of her. 

“Rey,” he returns, twining one hand through the lowest loop of her buns and untangling it, combing through her hair with his fingers until it flows in a chestnut-brown river down her back.

She smiles up at him, tracing lazy patterns against his back, and her face settles into momentary peace before her eyes widen and she gasps.

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” she swears, breaking out of his hold and diving down to pick the discarded book, now irreparably soggy. “I’ve ruined it, I’m so sorry—” 

“It’s okay,” Ben reassures her, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll get you a new one—a whole set, even. Signed.”

When Rey smiles, it’s like the sun coming out. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i hope i tagged everything properly, but please tell me if not. 
> 
> also, i'm debating writing a rey pov companion piece/sequel, so let me know in the comments if that's something people would be interested in!
> 
> you can follow me on twitter to keep up with this and other projects [here!](https://twitter.com/bensreys)


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